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As both Motorola and HTC have faltered, Samsung has taken over the Android device ecosystem with its Galaxy brand. That trend seems sure to continue with the Galaxy S5 just days away from release and meeting with favorable reviews. Samsung managed to restrain itself to an astounding degree this time — whereas the Galaxy S4 was accompanied by innumerable mediocre software features, the Galaxy S5 focuses on a few aspects in particular, one of which is battery life.

In addition to the standard power saving mode, Samsung has created a new Ultra Power Saving Mode (UPSM). This feature leverages tightly integrated hardware and software to extend standby time many times over, apparently allowing the phone to squeeze 24 hours of standby time out of just 10% battery life. Early impressions indicate it works even better than expected. Samsung may have under promised and over delivered on this one, but how?

Ultra Power Saving Mode is not simply a fancy way to restrict background data and dim the screen like most other OEMs do — this mode drastically reduces power drain by pulling back on almost everything the phone does. The most obvious change when activating UPSM is the switch to a grayscale display. This wouldn’t make much difference at all to a phone with an LCD, but Samsung’s Super AMOLED is playing to its strengths here.

An AMOLED panel differs from LCD in that it doesn’t need a backlight. All the light is produced by the pixels, so a black pixel is simply off (uses no power). By changing to a black and white UI, the Galaxy S5 needs to light fewer pixels, thus reducing power usage substantially. It also caps brightness at a maximum of 87 nits, a big drop from over 400 nits without Ultra Power Saver. Does that make it harder to read? Not really. AMOLEDs have very high contrast, so a black and white interface — even one that is very dim — is surprisingly readable.

Big changes happen on the inside of the Galaxy S5 when UPSM is engaged too. The device comes with a Snapdragon 801, which has four Krait 400 CPU cores clocked to 2.5GHz. Ultra Power Saver Mode takes advantage of Qualcomm’s custom ARM cores — two cores turn off completely, and the remaining two are downclocked and capped at 1.5GHz. To compensate for the reduction in processing power, Samsung also drops the display refresh from 60Hz to 30Hz.

Samsung has designed the new TouchWiz software to be ruthless when UPSM is turned on — all running processes and services are ended, and nothing is allowed to run in the background except for the bare essentials needed for calling and messaging. You can only access a subset of apps in this mode, including the stock Samsung browser, messaging, phone, clock, and ChatOn. Of course, this might just be a devious way to get people to actually use ChatOn.

With UPSM activated, the Galaxy S5 is able to drop its power usage to just 16.8mW, which could run the phone in standby for over 64 hours on a 10% charge. Samsung only claimed 24 hours, which likely assumes you’ll still wake it up on occasion. Our own informal testing showed 2% battery drain for a 15-hour overnight stretch, during which the phone was in standby the entire time.

Ultra Power Saver Mode is an example of an OEM using its Android modification powers for good instead of evil. After all, Google hasn’t even bothered with a power saving mode in stock Android. There are aspects of TouchWiz that still need hammering out, but it probably has the most impressive power saving feature of any smartphone today.

Also i don’t think you did your math correct. you don’t get 100% efficiency over a long period of time let along out of a battery. It would last more like 12 days.

I call on @Extremetech to test me on this.

Mitsuhashi

You’re probably right about my math being wrong, but can you explain where you got 12 days?

I’ve had a pair of alkalines run a digital alarm clock for 4+ years (I put my stuff in storage, left the country for 4.5 years, came back, and it was still running), so I’m not sure why a LiPo would lose so much to inefficiency within a matter of days.

Turns out my math was bad aswell.
I estimated a 30% loss from heat. which gave me 7.8%
which would give me around 18 days not 12.

I got my estimations of 30% from this article.[1] Give or take. i believe im in the ball park to estimate that 30 days is unrealistic. and 18 days i recon would be achievable from no usage at 100% battery +-

Actually would be 750hrs as the 2% for 15hrs already includes heat loss and charge leakage etc.. That is on the assumption that 100 to 98% has same energy potential as 10 to 8%

VirtualMark

This is pretty cool! Also, it’s good to see a company under promise and over deliver for a change – Nvidia could learn a lesson here.

Joel Detrow

If you’re referring to the recent driver update, I’ve heard some amazing stories from other Warframe players (I have an AMD card) saying they gained up to 40% performance. It seems to have a significant effect on folks whose CPUs were bottlenecking them, much like Mantle was supposed to do.

VirtualMark

Yes that’s exactly what I was talking about, good to know that some people are getting large gains.

Sean Lumly

This feature is HUGE for smartphones in general, and very welcome. It ensures that battery life can be made a priority if the user so wishes, or has little other choice.

I am looking forward to seeing how this feature evolves! I would gladly take a single under-clocked core but with the ability to run any application in this mode. I would also be ok with green-on-black only as it is the most efficient of the OLED sub-pixels and this would likely significantly increase battery life further.

Coupled with replaceable batteries, and an ultra-low sub-2 hour battery charge time, the S5 is a longevity beast, and has set a new bar for smartphones.

WatDah

Except nobody would buy a S5, or any smartphone, and use this mode continuously for a long period of time. Not unless they are desperate to save power for a short period, when their first battery is done, and for some reason can’t find or have access to a power outlet, or a computer, or their car where they would most likely have a car charger, if they are a power user like that.

Sean Lumly

The main point of the feature isn’t to use it continually, but rather when it is needed — when the battery is dangerously low. It would be tremendously useful at extending the life substantially even in this state.

Not so ironically, a near-dead battery is a common occurrence in my experience (and among those that I know). Having this mode would be frequently useful.

For power frugal individuals, it may be useful to put it in this mode. This may be useful if you only plan to use the device casually over a long period (eg. business trip). In this way, 4 days away from a charger with light use becomes a possibility. Pack a charged battery, and that’s a week away from an outlet.

n0th1ng_r3al

I totally would! But I would figure out a way to use Tasker and NFC to switch it on the fly when I need graphical performance.

XT8088

Yeah, Tasker and UPSM are a perfect combination! I use tasker to activate airplane mode on my Note 2 during night time. Even airplane mode is not as good as UPSM. I I can still see about 5-8% drop in 8 hour duration.

nalij

You might want to look at the LG G2, without any modifications I only use between 4 – 6% of battery overnight (8+ hrs). The battery life is just a beast, I get 55+ hrs on normal usage. If LG ever included a UPSM feature this thing would keep a charge forever.

Andreas Sjånes Berg

Well, a lot of times, I know i need to save most of the battery becouse I’m going on a long trip after work (for example). It would awesome to activate this kind of a powersaver at work, and still have 100 % for the trip.

Or maby you are on a weekly trip, where you only need the basic features 99 % of the time. Or on other occasions when you don’t use the phone activly, and want to save the juice for when you REALLY need it.

Glenn Scott

I like my S3, and am looking forward to getting an S5, but with the ultra power saving mode, this makes it a no-brainer. I hated getting home with only 10% power left considering all I did almost all day was check my email and make a few calls. This would allow me to only have to charge it every few days, and still be able to use the phone!

marc

just imagine what moto x could do with something like this!

BOBTECH

It’s awesome and amazing at the same time can’t wait until tomorrow to open the S5!

Ray C

I guess this is useful if you’re the type of person that likes to leave your phone laying around for long periods of time forgetting to charge it

How long will it take until all phones default to this configuration and start measuring battery life in weeks? This phone makes me want to upgrade now!

Meo Wong

Um…should I be impressed? Unless 10% battery strength drains more quickly than 100%, I’m not impressed.

My Nexus 5 only used 1% or “8hr 12m on battery” (down to 99%), on standby at night. The biggest battery drainer is the screen usually. And Nexus 5’s battery life was rather mediocre I thought.

Zaim De Noisy

ok you didn’t get it at all, it’s 10% while using it often, not only in pure standby, in standby it can last 26 days, your nexus can’t, it sucks….

Maria G

May I ask what you mean by “charges rather quickly”? What time frame are we speaking? Minutes? Hours? How long?

Peter Wilcox

Bring us the 32 gig version please.

macloo stanley

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Surprisingly, charger is one of these gadget accessories.
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melstant

My 5 is sucking battery down quicker than my 2.5 year old Razr. I can be @ 100% and down to 60% w/in just a few hours and that’s with it just sitting on my desk at work, doing nothing on it, no apps running??! Not understanding this at all!

Gabriel Lawrence

I wanted to let you know my personal experience as I feel a lot of the comments don’t grasp what this feature is actually like to use. So I had about 10% left, put the upsm on, but was reading an article on the “internet” app. It sucked through that 10% seemingly just as fast as it would have without the mode on. This isn’t an everyday wonder, just in very rare cases would this be beneficial. Like if I was lost in the desert, I would probably turn it on right away. Without access to email or gmail app, it’s not something that’s very usable when it is on. You likely wouldn’t find it usable enough at work all day for example. Definitely not a good reason to get the phone.

gurung

Good new feature, i hope this feature comes in other smartphones including the mid range and low range which i can afford. and please please i request samsung not to keep it for themselves in some patent…. let everyone benefit from it…..

blankho

Great idea, just lacking a basic feature that is so basic it is hard to imagine one could forget it. It needs to be integrated such that you could program it to automatically go into this mode when the battery life drops to some user defined preset level. Wouldn’t it be great to dial your phone and still find it the next day after normally it would be dead? Not sure what it would take, but a nice app for that would be appreciated.

Michael Soza

I use this mode when I’m working. I need to focus on what Im doing so not having the full power during that hours doesn’t bother me. Easily my phone can last 2+ days more now. Even if I use it extensivelly in off hours…streaming audio, video, kindle, youtube etc.
In one word awesome feature.

drzodiac

To be fair and honest, stock android does have a battery saver mode. Had you spent an ounce of effect researching before posting a news article you’d realize the actual setting is under battery then toggle on battery saver settings…

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